Why T. S. Eliot?
In which I explain T. S. Eliot's outsized influence in my life.
I’m sure some of you wonder why I’ve hitched my wagon to T. S. Eliot in making my memoir. It would seem that T. S. Eliot, with his classicism and hearkening back to a more class-conscious world had grown out of favor in recent years.
But the Nobel-prize winning poet had an outsized influence in my life from a young age.
I listened to my sister talk about her adventures in college. As the youngest of four, my brother and sisters moved out of the house and on with their lives before I was 8. Lisa was the poet of the family and talked about T.S. Eliot, with his “coffee spoons” and “Prufrock,” an odd-sounding name to pre-adolescent me.
Before long, she got a golden retriever puppy, from a litter sired by my brother’s dog, Burr. She named him Eliot, her constant companion for years. Eliot got distemper and almost died, but he was saved. He wasn’t quite the same after that, lolling his head to the side with his tongue-hanging out. But he was a sweet dog and fiercely protective of my sister. When they’d visit the house, he’d wander around in our cement backyard, and finally pick one of my mom’s potted plants to squat over and poop.
I don’t remember studying Eliot in high school, but when I started literature studies in college at CSU Northridge, I had a Major American Writers class with Louis Owens, a young, handsome professor who kick-started my career in academia. Owens was an expert on John Steinbeck and had grown up in the Salinas valley. In the Major American Writers class, he taught Eliot’s The Waste Land and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Later, her offered a waste land literature course, which I enrolled in and loved. We studied books that had obvious connections to The Waste Land, such as The Great Gatsby, The Natural, Blood Meridian, and many more.
Owens became a mentor to me, taught me how to write academic papers, wrote letters of recommendation for me to grad school. I accepted at The University of New Mexico because they offered me a TAship, a way to pay for grad school. I had also been accepted at The University of Washington. Louis had left CSU Northridge for UNM. When I arrived, Louis sneered at me, wondering why I was there. He said I should have taken the spot at UW, a much better school.
In my first semester of grad school, I enrolled in Owens’ course on waste land literature, wrote a paper on Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent, a detailed analysis of the waste land influence on the last page of the novel.
I came down with a serious flu at the end of the semester. The department secretary showed up at my apartment to take me to the student health center because I had missed four straight days of class at the end of the term. I had to take incompletes after my first semester.
I quickly finished the final projects so I wouldn’t fall behind. Owens gave me a “B” on my paper on Steinbeck’s last novel, my first “B” in grad school. I got that out of the way quickly. The grade felt punitive, Owens own discontent that I ended up in New Mexico like him. But I revised the paper and submitted it to The Steinbeck Quarterly. The reviewers provisionally accepted the paper, provided I rewrite the ending to conform with how the scholars-that-be in the Steinbeck world wanted Steinbeck to be viewed. They wanted me to change my point. I preferred not to and let the paper grow stale. Many years later, I threw it out.
Owens and I remained friends, but I never took a class from him again. He visited Lawrence when I was at the University of Kansas. I had dropped out of my Ph.D. studies and was pursuing a second Master’s degree, this time in Linguistics. I drove Owens around town as he read from his latest works at KU and at Haskell Indian Nations University. We didn’t have much to talk about. After that, we lost touch.
My life took a turn after that. I finished my course work and sat on an unfinished thesis. Then I got fired from a job, which led to a move from Kansas to California. I had been out of class for four years and missed my academic life.
In early 2006, I got in touch with my office mate from my UNM days, just to relive old times. He said, “Did you hear about Louis Owens?” I hadn’t. “He killed himself, shot himself in the chest in his truck at the Albuquerque Airport.” I was shocked. That was in 2002. He was 54 years old.
I would not have had a career in higher education without Louis Owens. He always reminded me so much of my brother. They both loved the wilderness and hated the city. Because of their ages and their roles in my life, Owens and my brother merged somewhat in my mind.
These two men were the strongest influences in my life. I learned about Owens’ suicide in 2006, four years after the fact. What my office mate didn’t know, however, was that, two years after Owens’ suicide, my brother also died by suicide in 2004. My brother was 51 years old. Learning about Owens’ death was a shock that led me to think of my brother’s death all over again. I didn’t know Owens’ that well, certainly not like I knew my brother who for 13 years fought against his suicidal impulses and major depressive disorder before finally jumping from the Fremont Bridge in Portland, Oregon. He was found in the Willamette River.
“I do not find / The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.”
(lines 54-55, Eliot, The Waste Land)
I would not follow their paths. Waste land imagery and themes would continue to haunt my life for years to come. Many years later, as I faced the blank page on my laptop to write about my brother, I would find out just how connected Owens, The Waste Land, and my brother are in my mind.
With my manuscript finished, I am preparing a query letter, a synopsis, and the first 19 pages of my manuscript for review at the Atlanta Writers Conference. The materials are due April 4. The conference is May 6-7.
Spring is here. Enjoy your week.